Entry #8-The Mirror
I went back to the Hollis estate today.
I had told myself I would not need to. The sale was closed. The house belonged to Plum now. Whatever problems lived inside it belonged to her too. My job had been to move the deed from one name to another, and I had done that. I had done it so well that I had even managed to forget, most of the time, that I had once stood alone in that ballroom and felt the house watching me.
But Plum asked me to come.
She said the architect would be there.
She said they needed to walk the property before the structural repairs began.
She said it would be helpful if I attended, since I knew the house.
I almost laughed when she said that.
I knew the house.
As if knowing a house were the same as having been inside it once.
As if knowing a house were not more like being known by it.
The architect’s name was Elias Thorne. He was younger than I expected, with ink-stained fingers and the serious, irritated expression of a man who had already discovered several expensive problems and was preparing himself to deliver bad news politely. He carried a laser measure, a tablet, and a small notebook that looked too old for his profession.
Plum wore a pale coat and gloves, though the day was not cold.
The house looked different.
Not better. Not worse.
Different.
The front door opened without sticking. The foyer smelled less of stale air and more of something dry and mineral, like stone after rain. The dust had been disturbed again. Not cleaned, exactly. Moved. There were new paths through it, new absences where objects had been shifted or removed.
The candles were gone from the parlor mantel.
The wax remained.
Dark smears on the wood, like old veins.
Elias began talking about load-bearing walls.
I tried to listen. He pointed to cracks in the plaster, water staining near the ceiling, the subtle slope in the floor that meant the joists had begun to surrender. He used words like settlement, shear, point load, remediation. He made the house sound like a patient whose illness had finally been named.
Plum asked questions.
Not the questions I expected.
She did not ask about cosmetic finishes or resale value. She asked about thresholds. She asked about the foundation stones. She asked whether the original frame had ever been moved. She asked if there had ever been a well beneath the house. She asked whether the cellar had ever flooded.
Elias seemed surprised, but he answered.
“There’s evidence of old water intrusion,” he said. “Nothing active now. But the bones have been stressed.”
“The bones,” Plum repeated.
He nodded. “That’s what we call the structure.”
“Yes,” Plum said. “Of course.”
I stood near the doorway and tried not to look toward the ballroom.
I failed.
The double doors were open.
The room beyond was empty.
The salt circle was gone.
That was what stopped my breath. Not that it had been removed—someone could have swept it away, or carried it off, or scattered it. But the floor where it had been looked different. Cleaner. Darker. As if the wood remembered the shape even after the salt was gone.
I looked away.
Elias was measuring the width of the hallway. Plum stood near the staircase, listening to him with that still attention she had, the kind that made people explain themselves more than they intended.
“I’m going to check the east parlor,” I said.
No one stopped me.
No one seemed to hear me.
I walked down the hall, my heels sinking slightly into the runner where it had begun to rot. The house was quiet, but not empty. I know the difference now. Empty houses make noises: ticks, sighs, drafts, the small protests of materials adjusting to temperature. This house was quiet the way a held breath is quiet.
The east parlor had been a sitting room once. The wallpaper there was faded to the color of weak tea. A mirror hung above the fireplace.
It was not a beautiful mirror.
The frame was dark wood, carved with leaves that looked more like claws. The glass was old, silvered at the edges, slightly warped. It did not reflect the room evenly. It made the walls lean. It made the window look farther away than it was.
I stood in front of it without knowing why.
My reflection looked tired.
The red thread on my wrist was visible beneath my cuff. I had pushed my sleeve up without realizing it. The knot sat against my skin like a small wound.
Behind me, the room was empty.
Then I saw Plum.
Not in the room.
In the mirror.
She stood just inside the doorway behind me, her hands folded in front of her, her head tilted slightly as if she had been watching me for some time. Her coat was pale. Her hair was dark. Her expression was not the expression I had seen on her face in the office, or at lunch, or at the closing table.
It was patient.
Not human patient.
Patient the way a locked room is patient.
I turned.
The doorway was empty.
The hallway beyond it was empty.
I could hear Elias’s voice somewhere farther down the corridor, low and careful, talking about joist spacing. I could hear the faint tap of Plum’s shoes on the other side of the house.
She was not behind me.
She was not in the room.
I looked back at the mirror.
For one second—one terrible, stretched second—her reflection was still there.
Not beside me now.
Farther back.
Deeper in the glass.
As if the mirror had taken her in and was showing me where she stood when no one was looking.
Then the reflection corrected itself.
The room returned. The wallpaper. The window. My own pale face. The red thread on my wrist.
No Plum.
I stood there until my legs began to ache.
When I finally left the east parlor, I found Plum and Elias in the dining room. Plum was looking up at the chandelier where the herbs had once hung. They were gone now. Only red thread remained, looped over one arm of the fixture.
Elias was writing something in his notebook.
“There you are,” Plum said.
Her voice was ordinary.
Warm, even.
“I was checking the mirror,” I said.
I do not know why I said that.
Plum looked at me.
“Did it show you anything useful?”
I laughed.
It was a bad laugh. Too quick. Too sharp.
“Only the usual,” I said. “Bad lighting.”
Elias smiled politely.
Plum did not.
She looked at me for a moment longer, then turned back to the chandelier.
“We’ll need to reinforce this ceiling,” she said.
Elias nodded. “Yes. The bones are tired here.”
Plum’s eyes lifted to mine.
“Bones can be strengthened,” she said.
I touched the red thread on my wrist.
It was warm.
Warmer than my skin.